Sunday, May 12, 2019

One of
the great crises facing the global community today is that democracy, the right
of ordinary people to control their own lives, is on the defensive while
authoritarianism is growing stronger.

And at
its root is the fact that a handful of incredibly wealthy people are exerting
enormous economic and political power over the planet. Unbelievably, in the
global economy today, the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 99
percent, and a handful of billionaires own more than the bottom half of people
around the world — that’s 3.7 billion
people.

That
is the reality.

People
in our own country, and around the world, are angry and betrayed, and they feel
that nobody is listening to their pain.

And
one of the results of that reality is that in Europe, in Russia, in the Middle
East, in Asia and elsewhere we are seeing movements led by demagogues who
exploit people’s fears, prejudices and grievances to achieve and hold on to
power.

Next
week, Donald Trump is set to welcome one of those leaders into the White House:
Hungary’s far-right authoritarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán.

Now, I
have always found it very strange that Trump has such a hard time getting along
with leaders of the world’s major democracies but feels very comfortable with
authoritarians like Orbán, Putin, Xi Jinping, Bolsonaro and Mohammad bin
Salman.

But
the truth is, while they all differ in some respects, they share a number of
key attributes: hostility toward democratic norms, antagonism toward a free
press, intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities, and a belief that
government should benefit their own selfish financial interests.

This
trend certainly did not begin with Trump, but there’s no question that
authoritarian leaders around the world have drawn inspiration from the fact
that the leader of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy seems to
delight in shattering democratic norms.

Other
authoritarian states are much farther along this kleptocratic process. In
Russia, it is impossible to tell where the decisions of government end and the
interests of Vladimir Putin and his circle of oligarchs begin. They operate as
one unit.

Similarly, in Saudi Arabia, there is no debate about separation
because the natural resources of the state, valued at trillions of dollars,
belong to the Saudi royal family. In Hungary, far-right authoritarian leader
Viktor Orbán is openly allied with Putin in Russia. In China, an inner circle
led by Xi Jinping has steadily consolidated power, clamping down on domestic
political freedom while it aggressively promotes a version of authoritarian capitalism
abroad.

So the
question is: Where do we go from here?

To
effectively oppose right-wing authoritarianism, we cannot simply go back to the
failed status quo of the last several decades. In order to fight this trend, we
need to strengthen the global coalition of progressive democrats.

While
authoritarians promote division and hatred, we promote unity, inclusion, and an
agenda based on economic, social, racial, and environmental justice.

The
people of the world must come together to end the absurdity of rich and
multinational corporations stashing over $21 trillion in offshore bank accounts
to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and then demanding that their
respective governments impose an austerity agenda on their working families.

It is
not acceptable that the fossil fuel industry continues to make huge profits
while their carbon emissions destroy the planet for our children and
grandchildren.

It is
not acceptable that a handful of multinational media giants, owned by a small
number of billionaires, largely control the flow of information on the planet.

It is
not acceptable that trade policies that benefit large multinational
corporations and encourage a race to the bottom hurt working people throughout
the world as they are written out of public view.

It is
not acceptable that, with the Cold War long behind us, countries around the
world spend over $1 trillion a year on weapons of destruction, while millions
of children die of easily treatable diseases.

In
order to effectively combat the rise of the international authoritarian axis,
we need a global progressive movement that mobilizes behind a vision of shared
prosperity, security and dignity for all people and that addresses the massive
inequality that exists, not only in wealth but in political power as well.

Such a
movement must be willing to think creatively and boldly about the world that we
would like to see.

We must take the
opportunity to reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global community based
on human solidarity, that recognizes that every
person on this planet shares a common humanity, that we all want our children
to grow up healthy, to have a good education, have decent jobs, drink clean
water, breathe clean air, and live in peace.

Our
job is to reach out to those in every corner of the world who share these
values and who are fighting for a better world.

In
a time of exploding wealth and technology, we have the potential to create a
decent life for all people. Our job is to build on our common humanity and do
everything that we can to oppose all of the forces, whether unaccountable
government power or unaccountable corporate power, who try to divide us up and
set us against each other.

We
know that those forces work together across borders. We must do the same.